


the world still turns

by dramaturgicallycorrect



Series: all my favorite conversations [12]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Beaches, Canon-ish, Future Fic, M/M, infinity au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-28
Updated: 2016-06-28
Packaged: 2018-07-18 17:23:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7324084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dramaturgicallycorrect/pseuds/dramaturgicallycorrect
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>It’s not like he’s not seen any of them over the last eighteen months -- he has – but certainly not all once, not like the way it used to be. Not even the 2015 Way It Used To Be, because even before Zayn left they’d all pretty much tried to do their own thing. Like Just Starting Out Way It Used To Be when they were too scared to let go of each other because they didn’t have anybody else.</i>
</p><p>  <i>Niall had always had his family and the crew and all, but most days it felt like it was just the five of them and nobody else. And the world was laid out in front of them for the taking and they didn’t know who they were or who they wanted to be. Some days Niall still doesn’t know who he is or who he wants to be and he thinks that’s just as comforting as it is terrifying.</i></p><p>  <i>You’re not supposed to have it all figured out by age 23. He thinks people forget that sometimes.</i><br/> </p><p>[Or Niall organizes a lads’ holiday to see if they still fit.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	the world still turns

**Author's Note:**

> i guess this is still a present, it's for my lads, who took me to this beach, who taught me about ghost crabs, who i taught about fan fiction, and who aren't in this fandom. may they never find this fic amen.
> 
> eternal gratitude for my sun and stars amy for holding my hand and petting my hair (metaphorically), and to jessi for reading this even though it's a narry.
> 
> this is part of the mitam series, etc etc.

 

Niall thrives on the beach. The sun, the surf, the sand, his sunglasses… other... s-things. He likes to rest his chair just high enough on the shore that his feet get run over regularly by the slow creeping waves. He likes to keep a steady buzz, sometimes tip over just on the other side of drunk off his collection of lukewarm Duke’s. He likes to stare out into the waves until everything gets fuzzy -- the beach, his mind, the time -- and he can’t think of more than four parts of the beach that start with the letter S.

He likes this beach particularly, likes that it’s quiet and full of old pensioners who look at him not because he’s Niall Horan off One Direction but because he’s the youngest lad on their private beach. He’d gotten the condo a while back, something modest and buried where he’d be least expected.

He likes to do unexpected things, if only just to prove everyone doesn’t have him pegged the way they think they do. Everybody’s had their say and their speculations over the last year and a half and Niall would like to say he’s ignored it all and been true to himself. He’d like to say that.

He stays at the beach long past the sunset, until the beach is too dark to see anything but the stars, bright and unobscured. That’s another word that starts with the letter S, Niall realizes sleepily, stars, and in some ways they’re better than the sun. For one thing, he can look at the stars without consequence, long and hard, until they feel so infinite that Niall feels impossibly small.

He keeps a plastic bag for his empties hanging off his chair and it clangs a little when Niall stands up. He sways, steadying himself against the flimsy chair until he gets his feet stable under him on the uneven sand. When he picks the bag up, it’s a bit heavier than he thought it would have been. He feels a bit drunker than he should be.

There’s more weight in his stomach than the beer, threatening to crawl up and take hold of his throat. He doesn’t know why the thought of tomorrow hits him hard.

It’s not like he’s not seen any of them over the last eighteen months -- he has – but certainly not all once, not like the way it used to be. Not even the 2015 Way It Used To Be, because even before Zayn left they’d all pretty much tried to do their own thing. Like Just Starting Out Way It Used To Be when they were too scared to let go of each other because they didn’t have anybody else.

Niall had always had his family and the crew and all, but most days it felt like it was just the five of them and nobody else. And the world was laid out in front of them for the taking and they didn’t know who they were or who they wanted to be. Some days Niall still doesn’t know who he is or who he wants to be and he thinks that’s just as comforting as it is terrifying.

You’re not supposed to have it all figured out by age 23. He thinks people forget that sometimes.

He stumbles up the sand dune and moseys down the barely lit small wooden pier leading back to his condo, showering the sand off his feet along the way. He has the vague feeling his No Sand in the House rule isn’t long for this world, but he still kicks his flip flops by the front door, towels off anything the shower didn’t get before going inside.

The condo is quiet. He keeps the balcony door open because the screen’ll stop most of the bugs from coming in and he likes the sound of the ocean. It’s a safe and secret space and he almost regrets letting the rest of them know about it. Almost.

He doesn't know what any of them are anymore. They'd given themselves lots of names over the years -- band mates, teammates, best friends, _brothers_. He likes to think the deepest of them is true, that they're something greater than just coworkers. Not that he's ever had proper coworkers before, not that he knows the difference.

It's hard to think of what they've done as a job, when it always seemed like more of a lifestyle. So this is the best idea really, get them all out of their element. See if they still fit.

\--

He passes out on his sofa without bothering to shower or change and wakes the following morning with a killer headache and a Louis Tomlinson hovering over his face. The shock of his sudden appearance is just like Louis. Niall should have known he wouldn’t be prepared, he wouldn’t be eased into it. Louis doesn’t toe touch his way into a pool, he always cannonballs.

He’d made a plan, Niall, last night as he was falling asleep. Plans to approach each of them, assimilate them back into his life. Louis’ gone and cocked it up in the first second.

“You should lock the door, young Neil,” he says.

Niall hums a sleepy morning sound and stretches out his limbs like an ambitious starfish. “I like to leave it open for when Martha from next door is feeling frisky.”

“It’s a pretty sick setup you’ve got here,” Liam’s voice calls from one of the bedrooms. Niall’s glad they’ve come together, so his attention doesn’t have to be focused on one at a time. So he can ease his way back into it.

“Yeah, it’s good, she says I make her feel like she’s twenty years old again. It’s really just a service to my community. I take it pretty seriously.”

“Ha ha,” Liam intones, popping his head around the doorframe to show Niall he’s rolling his eyes.

Niall grins at him and thinks this is easy. He can do this.

By the time Niall finally picks himself up off the sofa, Liam’s chosen which of the six beds he wants and Louis’ got his head in the refrigerator, pulling out his first beer of the day. Niall casually glances at the microwave clock as he unearths a bottle of paracetamol. 10.23 am.

Louis takes a long pull, his throat rippling as he swallows. “This beer is shit,” he says when he comes back up for air, but he takes another drink anyway.

Niall doesn’t have it in him to argue that Duke’s is a local delicacy and it commands a level of respect. “We can go to the Publix later; you can get whatever you want.”

“It’s a grocery store,” Liam says quickly as he enters the kitchen. He’s needlessly competitive. Like he’s anxious to prove he knows a thing or two about Florida, like Niall’s threatening to one up him now that he’s got a place here. “They’ve got one right by Universal Studios. I’ve been, it’s quite nice.”

“Pretty sure it’s just a grocery store, mate.” Louis claps a hand on Liam’s shoulder as he passes him, headed for the balcony. He leaves the screen door open like he expects the two of them to follow him unbidden. The sad thing is -- or maybe the comforting thing is -- they will.

“Hey, Nialler,” Liam says, snaking his arms around Niall’s back and pulling him in for a strong hug.

Niall curls into him, stuffing his face in Liam’s neck like he used to, pleased to know he still fits here. Liam’s always been the softest of them, even when he goes for the washboard abs. He’s never been sharp or gangly, just soft.

“You smell like coconuts,” Liam notes.

Niall can’t tell if that’s a compliment or a criticism, so he says, “Yep.”

Liam takes a step back and gets a good look in at Niall’s tanned and freckled skin that makes his hair look all the brighter. He grins, satisfied with the result. “You look good.”

Niall gives him the same onceover, takes in the dark circles under his eyes. Liam’s shaved his head again, which he does when he’s bored or frustrated. He looks like he’s trying to hold it together, and he’s just barely doing so.

“You look like you haven’t slept in weeks.”

Liam shrugs, something bashful in his features that confirms just that. “We should -- ” Liam starts, gesturing for the open screen door.

Niall nods, lets him dodge that conversation like he wants to. “We should.”

He’s not sure he deserves to get on Liam about it at this point, having been so separate from his life. He knows why Liam’s done that in the past, maybe even been the reason himself. But they’re all their own entities now. Niall feels he doesn’t owe anyone anything; he can’t ask too much of Liam.

Niall gives it a few more weeks before the heat is oppressive, before half the condos are rented out to vacationing families and he’ll have to go home. There’s a light breeze on the balcony and Louis’ already made himself at home lounging on the chair closest to the grill. Just a hint of the ocean is visible over the rooftops and palm trees. It’s not glamorous by any means, you’ll never hear of a celebrity putting down roots here. Which makes it perfect.

“How in the hell did you find this place?” Louis asks.

“They do the Players Championship here.”

“Mm,” Louis hums, “which one of your boyfriends took you to that?”

Niall levels a look at him. “Shut up.”

It’s a bit different, that, the golf thing, always has been, because it’s just a thing that belongs to Niall. It’s not in the industry, it’s a different life, and he knows if he was allowed to pry his way inside Louis’ mind, he’d be able to confirm Louis thinks golf’s going to steal him away. He thinks Niall will trade in a guitar for a nine iron and leave the rest of them behind. It’s a rich double standard, what with the movies and all.

Niall would be lying if he said he didn’t think about it sometimes, if he didn’t think a life in golf would be simpler, less stressful. But he knows who he is, he knows he’s got music in his veins, the itch in his fingers, a song at the tip of his tongue. And, honestly, he’s stupidly privileged enough to be able to do both.

“When’s Harry in?” Liam asks.

“Dunno, but he said today.”

Louis stands, already looking like he’s ready for a fight. “I’m not waiting. Came all this way. Get me on a beach.”

Liam looks between the two of them, his lip going between his teeth like he’s not sure he wants to get in the middle of whatever he thinks is about to happen, but Niall’s not in the habit of letting things get started these days. He simply sends Harry a text as he leads them down the pier to the beach. The beach was the first step on Niall’s plan anyway.

Of each of them, maybe he’s scared of Harry the most, has the least idea of what to expect from him. He’s been with Harry through years of his own incarnations, there to gently support him when he’s found a new person to be, whatever versions of himself that he’s created for whatever purpose he’s needed them for. Niall’s not certain what he’ll get today. He couldn’t tell from the few texts they’d traded over Harry’s birthday a few months back what kind of person he’s become.

When Harry disconnects, he does so hard and fast, with no mercy, and Niall can’t begrudge him a bit. He’s honestly a little jealous of it. Niall considers himself pretty laid back, ready to roll with anything new or look over anything bad, but Harry takes it to a new level. It’s just sometimes that level includes closing everyone out, Niall included, makes everyone think Harry doesn’t care about anything or anyone.

Niall knows that’s not true, though. He’s fairly certain it’s not true.

\--

Liam’s building a sandcastle that looks like it’ll topple over if he breathes on it the wrong way and Louis is building a crude sand penis next to it in protest of Liam not letting Louis bury him. Niall dozes, his eyes drifting open and closed watching them. When he can’t feel the heat of the sun on his face suddenly, he peeks an eye open at the shadowy figure standing over him. That’s the second time today, he thinks, but this time it’s not Louis.

“You can sit around in the sun in your backyard, Horan. If you’re gonna go to the beach, you should get in the water.”

Niall blinks lazily up at him for that devil may care aesthetic, but he genuinely didn’t want to get in the water before Harry got here. “Waiting on you, wasn’t I?”

He thinks for a breath-catching moment Harry’s mad at him, his lips pursed, the rest of his expression obscured by these massive sunglasses and an even bigger straw beach hat, until he says, “You’re going to get a sunburn.”

Niall bites down on a grin. “Then do something about it.”

He doesn’t actually expect Harry to do anything about it beyond try to spray him halfheartedly in the face, but he does. He settles his beach bag in the sand next to Niall’s chair, digging through it for the sunscreen, his barely buttoned flower shirt gaping open to display the chest Niall’s more than familiar with. He comes back with a brand that Niall doesn’t recognize, probably some sort of organic shit that cost twenty quid for the small tube that’ll make his skin smooth as a baby’s bum.

Niall squeaks a little when Harry drops into his lap, straddling his long legs on either side of Niall’s chair, taking advantage of the fact that this one’s close to the ground and doesn’t have any armrests on it. Harry either trusts in their anonymity or he’s seen enough to know that there’s almost no one on the beach. Either way it’s uncharacteristically brazen of him.

Harry’s meticulous in a way Niall should expect, methodical and judicious with the cream, applied with light traces of his fingers. Niall would have thought there was a barrier between them, that time would have built this sort of thing up to being inappropriate, but here they are. Pressed against each other like the truth isn’t Niall’s not seen him in a year, like they’ve lived lives where this is normal.

This is another version of Harry, the one just for Niall. And Niall loves it. He’s sort of breathless with it until he remembers to keep calm.

Harry even gets the tops of his ears, wrenching a giggle out of him. “Proper skincare is no laughing matter, Niall,” he says primly.

Niall clears his throat. “Of course not.”

Harry clearly hadn't thought through getting out of the chair and he lands his bony arse straight onto the sand trying to roll to his feet. Niall laughs instead of helping him up because he likes to see Harry embarrass himself a little sometimes. It makes him look a little more like a human and a little less cultivated. Then he gets up himself and pulls Harry to his feet.

Harry makes a little spinning motion with his hand until Niall clues in and presents his back for slathering. Harry’s large hands cover a lot of ground at once, working in the lotion far more rigorously than should be necessary. He catches on a spot in Niall’s lower back that rips a groan that could be pain or relief, Niall’s not even sure.

“Tense,” Harry murmurs.

“Slept on the sofa.”

Harry makes a sympathetic noise, because if there's anyone Niall knows in the whole world who is well accustomed to the hazards of sleeping on a sofa, it's Harry Styles.

He slaps Niall’s back once, irritating the remnants of a burn from earlier this week. Niall winces and says, “You shit,” but Harry's not listening.

“Poseidon,” Harry calls, seemingly to no one at all, or very possibly to Poseidon himself, before strutting out further into the beach, hat and sunglasses and shirt and all.

Liam’s brought a novelty donut float that he swears is the most brilliant thing he’s ever seen, and Harry snatches it up without asking him, not that anyone would ever tell him no. He continues stomping right out to the ocean, tossing a, “Hi lads, bye lads,” to Liam and Louis over his shoulder.

Niall follows him like they're tethered together, instinctual, ignoring Liam’s, “Was that Harry?” in favor of wading up next to Harry where he struggles with the donut in knee deep water.

Harry flumps into the float, wiggling his bum until it falls into the hole and his gangly limbs flop over the edge as they should. “Take me out to sea, Niall,” he commands, and Niall would never tell him no.

He hooks a hand around a handle and pulls Harry along, battling the rough waves as he goes. Harry's got it easy on his donut throne, tipping precariously at the big waves but nonetheless safe. Meanwhile Niall feels like he's taking a beating courtesy of the sea -- as soon as he maneuvers himself around another wave, jumps high to float with the water, or breaks it with his back, there’s another right there to take its place.

Niall’s taken a beating or two hundred in his time and held fast, stalwart, seemingly immune to the undercurrent that threatens to drag him down. The second he shows weakness, the second his feet don't seem like they've got purchase on the ground -- that's when he's vulnerable to be pulled under.

He never gets to lean his weight on the float, relax as thoroughly as Harry does. He does the heavy lifting. He’s sure Harry’s done more than his fair share of it in his day at Niall’s expense, whether he wanted to or not, so Niall doesn’t begrudge him for that either.

Besides, he tells himself with a shake of his head, it’s just a bloody float.

Harry looks dead asleep in the float, despite threatening to capsize should Niall lose his grip. There’s a level trust there Niall’s in awe of, sort of comforted by. Like maybe he’s spent all this time worrying over nothing, and this Harry’s the same one that left him back in 2015.

“Harry,” he insists, slapping at his arm but unable to take his eyes off the rolling wave coming for them, looking like it’ll destroy them once it crests over. This beach has got a killer undertow, there’s no way Niall’s standing his ground.

“Niall,” Harry murmurs, but even through his sunglasses, Niall can tell he hasn’t even bothered to open his eyes.

“Get out of the float.”

“What?” Harry doesn’t sound any more awake, damn him, he’s gonna flip over and go tumbling.

“Fuck, get out -- ” Niall starts, strengthening his grip on Harry’s arm and just managing to hold his breath and duck under the surface as the wave washes over them. The ocean tries to tear Harry away, his arm twisting in Niall’s grip as they’re both tossed about, and Niall can’t see a thing, won’t open his eyes until he feels his feet firmly touch the ground again.

He feels Harry’s other hand find his shoulder when Niall resurfaces, and then they’re breathing together, shuddering salty coughing exhales right into each other’s faces because they’re pressed close. Harry’s lost his sunglasses and his hat and Liam’s raft in the wave and his shirt is soaked through, but he’s got Niall in both hands. Niall’s got him too, pressing his fingers tight to focus on Harry and not the burn in his eyes and nose and throat.

Niall gets a good look at him for the first time, without his armor on, remembers he used to know what Harry’s ears looked like. He knows he’s one of the only ones who can get this close to him. Niall’s not particularly wild that it took a potential drowning to get him here, but it’s still refreshing.

Instead of being paralyzed by the thought that something serious could have just happened to them, Harry starts to laugh.

“You okay?” Niall asks.

“Poseidon’s in a mood,” Harry says as the laughter slows, his eyes raking over Niall’s face.

There’s something there, filling the small amount of space between them, and Niall isn’t sure how to break it. Harry does it first, sinking quickly into the water just before Niall gets slapped in the back by another brutal wave and stumbles.

Harry resurfaces with his head angled up so the ocean slicks his hair back. He looks a bit like a mythical creature, but Niall supposes that’s just Harry.

\--

Louis is, unsurprisingly, the easiest to fall back in with. He's probably spent more time with Louis than he has any of the other lads, between charity gigs and trips to LA. Louis is always out and doing things like he's afraid of obscurity, like he's got something to prove just by existing and making sure everyone knows it.

Niall would have honestly figured Liam for that kind of thing too, would never have pegged him to fall off the radar like he did, as anxiously productive as Liam's always been. But the hiatus was their own, they always said, they’re not accountable to each other or to management. That had been the agreement: do right by yourself, by your family. Take care of things. Do things. Be your own person.

He’d trusted them all to make the best decisions for themselves and then he’d butted right out of it. He’s gotta assume they all did just that, that there wasn’t anything he should have been doing for them along the way.

“It looks fine, mate, they’re gonna be closed by the time you’re done primping,” Louis says from the doorway of the master bath. Where he’s been torturing Niall throughout his shower to dressed and prepping in front of the mirror, seemingly completely desensitized to seeing him naked.

Niall pulls his fingers through his fringe to pull it off his forehead. The seawater makes it soft and fluffy, a bit impossible to do anything to it. Coupled with the chlorine from the vicious game of chicken they just played in the pool, it’s a bit of a lost cause. “You came back here an hour before the rest of us to make sure your hair intentionally looks like you just tugged a beanie off, _mate_ , fuck off.”

Louis flips him off, but there’s no heat to it.

“Where’d you all decide?” Next step on the plan, lads dinner.

Louis twists his phone around as if Niall’s going to get a good look at it from its reflection in the mirror. “Mulligan’s Pub, Nialler. We can be with your people.”

“Think I've got a cousin who works there,” Niall answers gamely. It's always just banter. He picks at his teeth in the mirror, at this point purposefully delaying just to be an arse.

“Course you do, bloody massive Irish family.”

Niall shrugs. “Well, you know. Every sperm is sacred.”

It’s meant to be a joke, one they’ve made to him about a hundred times before, but this time it doesn’t land. Louis hums, going a little distant like Niall’s seen him do when the fury settles and things get quiet and he remembers what there is to miss. Niall sort of gets it -- it’s easy to forget what you’re missing when the world’s spinning faster than you can chase it and the only thing you can focus on is trying to keep up.

But it’s been a day, if that, since he’s been away. Niall’s never known him to be hit by homesickness this quickly, but Louis’ never really had something this precious to go back to.

Niall turns to him instead of watching him in the mirror. “How’re you doing?” he asks. It’s a 50/50 tossup whether Louis’ll deflect or answer. He’s a live wire.

Louis chews on his lip for a bit, flipping that coin in his head, before he decides, “It’s hard.”

“Yeah,” Niall encourages gently.

“It’s hard to miss things these days, like it’s all big things from here on out. Walking and running and feeding himself and growing out of nappies and going to school.”

“You got a while before a few of those, mate.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I know.” He flaps a hand, looking frustrated with himself. “It’s just. What if I miss it?”

“Miss it how, like on tour? Because -- ” Niall stops himself up. They haven’t gone that far yet, they haven’t even breathed in that direction. The hint of that discussion darkens Louis’ face further.

“Whatever. It’s fine. Missed Ernest and Doris and all, they turned out just fine.” He shrugs a shoulder too violently to come off as careless as he probably intends. “Ready when you are.” He turns on his heel and goes.

“Tommo,” Niall calls after him, but not loud enough to be firm about it. He sighs and grips at the sink until his stomach stops turning, until the anxious feeling that he’s done something wrong passes. It’s never like that in this situation, Niall knows that, Louis’ told him that when he’s been called on it. They’ve all got their own levels of stress, their own processes for dealing with it.

Taking care of himself is hard enough, Niall can hardly imagine being responsible for a whole other person. Or more. But he reckons Louis’ always been like that, a caregiver first and foremost, for his siblings, for the lads themselves. Niall doesn’t understand what that’s like, not being an uncle, not even being someone’s kid himself.

He doesn’t know what to do or say with Tommo in this situation. He’s missed his family, he’s missed a girl, he’s missed home, he’s missed his friends. He knows how to deal with those. But Louis’ got this one thing on him, and Louis’ stumped him.

He breathes out. If he listens carefully, he can hear Harry in the kitchen, refusing to apologize for the loss of Liam’s donut float. “Poseidon giveth and Poseidon taketh away, Liam.”

“Maybe you should have fought Poseidon a little harder, then.”

If he listens carefully, he can hear the click and hiss of a bottle of beer being opened like they’re not all about to get absolutely trashed at the pub of Niall’s Floridian ancestors.

It’s the ambient noises of One Direction at play, whenever they could be bothered to be in a room together, slotting back naturally, in a way Niall hopes isn’t forced. The last thing he wants them all to do is play their old part, he decides, to pretend like they can pick up where they left off. Because they all left off for a reason, to fight exhaustion, for a moment of peace, to learn who they are when no one’s watching. They have to discover that about each other.

Then again. As much as he wants to grant them their well-earned privacy, he wants to know. He wants to know who they’ve decided to be. If they still fit.

\--

Harry knocks out as soon as he buckles himself in, sleeping off his London jetlag in the back seat like their travel time isn't roughly eleven minutes in the car. Niall could get it down to four, use the back way he discovered last weekend, but he takes the scenic route for Harry's sake.

Louis and Liam are up and out of the car as soon as he parks, leaving Niall to do the dirty work of coaxing Harry back to consciousness. He squats a little, a hand to Harry’s shoulder for a gentle shake, which slides its way to Harry’s cheek when that doesn’t do the trick.

“Sorry,” Harry’s mumbling before his eyes even crack open.

“All right, petal,” Niall assures him, patting at his cheek until Harry makes a half-hearted swat at him.

They find Liam and Louis already seated in the corner, looking far too invested in what looks like a spelling bee. When Niall glances around, he finds every telly in the pub turned to the Bee and every eye glued to the eleven-year-old trying to work her way through a word Niall’s honestly doubtful actually exists.

“Huh.” Harry’s eyebrows quirk in amusement at the sea of pensioners.

“What’s on, lads?” Niall asks as they take a seat.

“My money’s on her,” Louis says, pointing at the girl currently spelling, named Vasudha, “she’s gonna go all the way.”

“You’ve not even seen all the competitors,” Liam argues, like he’s offended on behalf of the remaining eight kids.

Harry makes a noise in disagreement. “Go with your gut.”

Louis snaps and points at Harry with approval. “I’ve got a natural instinct for televised competition, don’t question me.”

Their waiter squints at them a while, the look of someone young enough who thinks they should know who they are, but can’t exactly place them. Niall’s not in any hurry to give himself away, to indicate he’s nothing other than just a tourist, a normal lad out for a pint with his boys. He doesn’t want to destroy the illusion, he can’t focus too hard on it.

He’s pretending he didn’t rent out the condo next door for Bas and Paddy and Harry’s lad Ryan he sort of met in passing earlier, or that they’re not sitting at the next table, respecting their privacy and watching for danger.

They’re not normal, this isn’t normal. He’s a bloody pop star -- former pop star? -- not Barack Obama. He can’t even conceive of why his life should be in danger. Or when it was he let himself start to think this sort of thing was commonplace.

Harry swears he’s not hungry, just orders a black coffee, raising his voice a little for the waiter over the groans from another speller biting the dust. It takes two tries for Niall to wrench Liam’s attention from the television, not that it matters because Louis spends three full minutes quizzing the poor kid on their beer selection.

“I’ve got this table, and that one over there,” Niall tells him.

“Your dads?” he asks with a crook of his eyebrow towards them.

Niall’s not certain either are old enough to be their dads, but he still says, “Yeah.”

It doesn’t take long before they’re back into what has been affectionately termed the double date formation, more and more prevalent once they didn’t have to worry about someone third wheeling. Niall doesn’t mind the double date, not that he had much issue as the third wheel.

He’d done it, more often than not, at the start, when Harry and Louis were practically the same human, and Zayn was the only person who seemed to be able to keep Liam from alienating everyone else with his intensity. Niall’s not much for pairing off anyway. He’s always been a wanderer, sliding in easily with whoever he needed to with no issue. He’s never felt like an outsider.

He just doesn’t quite remember when it was they decided Harry belonged to him, but Harry does.

It’s different. This is stunningly different. The people they all were back then, those kids, they don’t even seem like the same people. These aren’t the same kids he fell in love with seven years ago, but he thinks he’s still in love with them. They’ve faced the impossible together. That doesn’t just go away, does it?

Harry runs his fingers through his hair, even though there’s really not much of it, like he’s just not able to break the habit. “This is nice, I’m glad you set this up.”

“Yeah,” Niall agrees.

He’d started with Harry, truthfully. Shored up the fact that Harry could go -- would go -- before asking any of the others. He knew if he’d started with Liam or Louis or both and Harry bailed or Harry couldn’t make it, he wouldn’t be able to stand Louis’ little snide comments or Liam’s sad puppy face.

Harry’s busy, is the thing, maybe not any busier than the rest of them. But he has this way of looking busier than everyone else, when he’s out doing things, when he hasn’t been seen in days. It makes Niall feel a bit special when Harry focuses on him, then, makes him feel like Harry cares enough to carve time out for Niall, when the whole world wants a piece of him.

Niall wonders if it makes him a bit entitled, then, to have everyone scrambling to please him just so he’ll look their way, just for a bit of his time. That way he can get anything he wants. The entire world as it revolves around Harry Styles. Niall’s pretty sure he does half an hour later when he tears his eyes away from the final four in the Bee to look down at his plate.

“Harry, what the fuck.”

Harry blinks wide-eyed at him, a chip suspended between his lips that muffles the, “What.”

Niall makes a face at him. “You said you weren’t hungry and yet you’re eating all my chips.”

Harry pulls the chip from his mouth and sets it back on Niall’s plate, like maybe that’s going to fix things. “Were you going to eat all of them?”

“Not now, I’m not.” And he probably wasn’t going to in the first place, really, it’s just the principle of the thing. He wasn’t asked. Harry just took what he wanted and assumed nobody would tell him no, always always does. The world as it revolves around Harry Styles.

“You can,” he offers, his voice growing soft in a way that grates Niall.

“How? Are you gonna mama bird what’s gone into my mouth, mate, because I’ll take a hard pass.”

“For fucks sake, lads,” Louis snaps, sliding his own plate of chips over to Harry. “Go bloody wild.”

Harry blinks down at the plate, but doesn’t take one. He looks a bit like he’s been wounded, to match the voice, or like a puppy that’s just had a finger shook in his face and been told a very firm, _Bad Harry_. He’s going to look pathetic, like no one can be mad at him if he’s pathetic. Niall’s immune, about to say something about it.

“Hang on, lads, listen,” Liam interrupts, seemingly oblivious to what’s going on, laying a hand on the table between them. They pause dutifully and Liam's face lights up as they all confirm what he heard. “They're playing our song,” he explains, just in case they _really_ haven’t got it.

“You don’t think -- like, do they know?” Harry asks, even though he’s always on camera watch, he’s got a savant-like talent for noticing them.

“Think it’s just a radio.”

“All Irish pubs are contractually obligated to play my music,” Niall says, eager to shrug off his irritation. He notes the way Harry watches him closely as he tips his bottle of Duke’s up for a swig. He’s probably looking to steal that too. “We take care of our own.”

Louis quirks an unimpressed eyebrow at him and intones, “Your music.”

“Yeah, over in Ireland, we’re known as _Niall Horan and the Rest of One Direction_.”

“That explains a lot of those signs,” Harry says, a fingers stroking his chin, feigning pensive. Like that he’s okay again.

“Nice that they haven't forgot about us,” Liam says. He gets like that, baffled that they haven’t fallen into obscurity.

Niall’s not particularly egotistic about it all, but he feels like he’s being pretty reasonable when he thinks they’ve got a bit of staying power in them. They might not have changed the world, revolutionized music forever, but they had something. They did something. They meant something. So sometimes he’s a little offended on their own behalf when he hears that kind of talk.

“They can’t have forgotten about us,” Louis dismisses, something so sharp in his tone that betrays he’s worried about just the same thing as well. “It’s only been -- how long, Nialler?”

Niall thinks about it and -- “I dunno? ‘Round eighteen months?”

“You don’t know -- you don’t _know_? Liam.” Louis tugs on Liam’s shirt sleeve until he’s nodding, wide eyed at Niall.

“You’re right, he must be some sort of… imposter,” Liam agrees seriously. “Niall doesn’t know.”

“The real Niall would know down to the minute.”

Niall works hard to find some sort of smile, but he reminds himself this is natural. He’s sort of lost pieces of the encyclopedia the way you forget maths over school holidays. If you don’t use it, you lose it, and Niall’s not had much reason to use it over the last year. That was the role he’d played then, but it might not be the role he plays now.

Harry makes an offended noise on his behalf. “He is the real Niall. Neither of you know either, you’re just as useless.”

“Cheers, Harry,” Niall deadpans, and Harry says, “You’re welcome,” like he doesn’t realize he insulted Niall as well.

“That just means it’s been too long,” Liam says, which instantly kills the mood. He doesn’t even seem to realize it, casually glancing back up at the spelling bee with a sip of his pint. But there’s an immediate tension in the air, too thick to even think about slicing through.

There’s that question that’s been hanging over them all day, threatens to cloud over the whole weekend. Is it time?

They’re meant to be elastic, stretching away from something bad or something uncomfortable until they can find a way to make it good again. It’s one of the only ways to get through the shit -- to pretend it’s not there. So none of them address it and eventually the song ends.

Harry clears his throat and glances around, holding his empty coffee cup in his hand helplessly like _what am I meant to do with this._ Niall eventually flags down the waiter for him.

“You’re gonna be up all night if you drink more of that,” Niall warns anyway, leaning in close to Harry’s ear to be heard over the roar of the Bee taking another competitor down.

“Will you stay up with me?”

Niall tells him no, just to watch his face fall into a scowl.

Vasudha wins the damn thing. He’d say they close out the bar watching the Spelling Bee, but it’s the bloody Spelling Bee. It ends by 10 pm because all the spellers probably have aggressive bedtimes. When their waiter buses their table, he takes Louis’ full plate of cold chips with him.

\--

Niall’s eyes are gummy with sleep but he doesn’t have to see to know it’s Harry that’s pressed up against his front, snuggled in like he’s got an invitation. They had, for some reason, bothered to go through the charade that Harry would sleep in the room next to his, but that the door would be open should he need it. Like Harry was a kid who’d need a safe space if he had a nightmare or if he thought there were monsters under his bed.

He manages to slide a hand over to stop his alarm without dislodging Harry, turns immediately to pet at his arm and say, “Harry. Hey, Haz.”

Harry makes a small noise of protest, so Niall knows he’s awake. “D’you still want to make that tee time?”

The wheels must be spinning hard in Harry’s brain, weighing his love of golf against how he has only gotten about four hours of sleep from all the caffeine Niall warned him against. Niall knows he's only gotten four hours because he’d been woken up at the bed dipping just then and didn't bother to look. Could have been a deranged pensioner, could have been one of his boys -- at 3 am, Niall's not getting up for anything.

“‘Kay,” Harry decides, his voice all deep and rumbly with disuse.  

“Do you want a coffee?” Niall asks, his lips peeling into a cheeky grin.

Harry groans and rolls over, burying his face so deep into Niall’s pillow that he could probably smother himself pretty effectively. Niall presses a kiss to Harry’s shoulder for some reason he can’t figure out before he rolls out of bed.

“You’re lucky you’re cute when you’re smug,” Harry says, his face having turned out of the pillow when Niall looks back at him.

Early morning Harry is really something else. Sleepy soft and so young -- not that he’s particularly old, he’s the youngest of them. He just has this intensity sometimes that makes him seem a decade older, and Niall’s never sure if it’s real or if he just wants people to look at him that way. If he thinks this is the only way people will take him seriously.

He’s glad Harry remembered that Niall asked him to pack golf clothes, just in case, and Harry finishes out with his armor, another hat and a pair of sports sunglasses, before they're ready to go. Not that he needs the sunglasses. Niall's pretty sure he only got a tee time because there's dark clouds in the sky and he's pretty sure no one will get through eighteen holes before the sky opens up.

But he wants to do this, this has always been something unique for the two of them, not something they shared with the other lads. It's not something they've honestly shared with each other in years, but Niall's got to try things out.

That’s part of the plan. He's got to define what role he's playing in Harry’s life now, what role Harry plays for Niall. Double date partners, golf buddies, whatever else they need.

Niall takes the shortcut this time, gets them there so quick Harry can't hope to fall asleep. He carries the golf bag they’ll share into the clubhouse, denying Ryan’s offer, because he likes it when Harry grins and calls him his caddy.

He calls himself a caddy to the gent they meet in the clubhouse as well.

“Might embarrass myself, actually,” Harry says, and Niall swears his cheeks are flushing, “what with you being a pro these days and all.”

He can’t bring himself to take the piss, finds his voice dropping into a mumble when he says, “Not a pro.”

They ask Harry’s lad Ryan if he wants to join them and Ryan laughs until he realizes they’re serious. “Uh, no, sorry, I actually can’t stand golf,” he says. Niall remembers hearing he’d lost a bet last night and Bas got the morning off.

“This is going to be a boring morning for you,” Niall answers.

“Used to it.”

“Ryan also hates jogging, yoga, frozen yogurt, and laughter,” Harry says, clapping his shoulder and mooning up at him. “So we’re pretty much perfect for each other.”

Niall smiles because his stomach twists even though it’s a joke and he doesn’t want anyone to know it. Ryan grunts.

Maybe Harry genuinely hasn’t played in years because he’s absolutely pants at it. It’s not at all like riding a bike, apparently -- his form’s gone, his ability to read the green, even knowing which club to pick.

Niall’s feeling so much secondhand embarrassment he almost wants to start throwing drives into the trees, just so he doesn’t finish as close to par as he normally does while Harry struggles in the sand pits. Harry seems blissfully unaware of the fact, or maybe he’s got no shame anymore.

He knows Harry. Or at least he did. He’d have bet money on it at one point, the fact that he knows Harry better than anyone else. Only they’ve fallen apart so quickly, and there’s so much to Harry’s life that he doesn’t know anymore. And there were always moments where he’d look at Harry and wonder exactly how much he truly knew about him. He’d wonder how much Harry was leaving out.

Harry lives his whole life by halves, giving half of himself, dedicating half of his heart or his brain or his time. The other half he keeps for himself. Niall’s not going to begrudge him that, not when Harry’s spent too many years giving all of himself away and getting burned for his troubles. As much as Niall wishes he was exempt, he’s not sure he deserves to be.

So Harry hasn’t golfed in a while, and he’s done a film Niall doesn’t know a damn thing about and two other things since then, and he’s still a bit miffed he had to see about Harry’s hair on social media, just like he has to see about almost everything about Harry on social media these days.

The sixth hole goes a bit better for Harry, he lands his ball at least in the vicinity of the hole. When Niall looks over, he’s doing the Single Ladies dance in celebration.

Niall laughs. “What fucking year is it?”

Harry stops up quickly, leveling Niall with a look. “Cultural relevance is an empty societal construct, Niall, not to be taken seriously,” he says primly. “And Beyoncé is eternal.”

He strolls off after his ball, just as the sky opens up and dumps rain down on them, the thunder having finally finished rumbling at them and making good on its threat. Harry pauses, looking between the sky and the ball, forlorn, genuinely uncertain about the rain. His white shirt starts to go translucent the longer he stands there, the dark tattoos slowly growing visible underneath it.

He looks back at Niall, like he’s looking for a hint of what to do. Niall doesn’t move either.

“Back to the cart, lads,” Ryan demands, slinging Niall’s bag over his shoulder and making a run for it. They startle into action, follow him obediently, still holding their own clubs. Niall jumps into the back seat to give Harry the front, but Harry crams in next to him.

“That would have been par,” Harry says, leaning in like he needs to be heard clearer over the sounds of the rain, but Niall’s never needed him to really lean that close. He’s always got an ear for whatever Harry’s had to say.

“Looked good,” Niall confirms. It honestly might have.

Harry leans back in his seat, grinning to himself. Niall knows better than to think Harry’s delusional. It’s more a product of bravado, perhaps, a way to pretend he’s doing just fine. Niall knows the feeling.

\--

Harry looks like he’s going to press up against the window, frowning out at the rain like a puppy waiting for his owner to come back.

Niall can’t figure Harry out, let alone himself. Niall’s up and down hourly, one side of his brain thinking this okay, that he can do this, the other side clouding his mind with doubts about everything he once knew to be true. This sort of yo-yoing is starting to do his head in, but he’s not sure how to get ahold of himself -- to reel the yo-yo string in, as it were. It’s not as if he can talk to anyone about it.

“Pardon me, sir.”

Niall turns, greeted by a waiter with a tray of drinks. He frowns at the mimosas, about to say he didn’t order anything of the sort, when Harry reaches for them and thanks the man. He hesitates in front of them, and Niall knows what’s about to happen by the redness of his ears.

“D’you mind if I get a picture?” he asks. “My kid was a pretty big fan of yours.”

Was. Niall shivers.

He takes his cue from Harry, who says, “‘Course,” waving a pacifying hand at Ryan before he reaches to get an arm around the man to squish the three of them together. Their drinks are carefully hidden from the frame of the picture.

Niall nearly reaches for the phone himself when he can tell the picture is going south, that the lighting where he’s got it positioned is going to make them too shadowy to see, and the dad’s half cut himself off.

He abstains, though, gives a tight grin, and offers to sign something if he’s got it, just in case the picture doesn’t come out. There’s that awkward moment when you’re not sure whether you should ask someone not to hold it for a bit, so no one knows where they are.

They decide not to say anything, Niall reasoning that if they stick to the condo or the private beach, no one’s likely to find them anyway. Hopefully that bloke’s about to make his kid’s day. Niall likes being part of that.

“When’ve you got to get back?” Niall asks, when it occurs to him he’s not sure how long they’ll need to stay incognito anyway.

“Monday,” Harry says with a grimace, pulling out his phone like he needs to confirm. “Got promo stuff for the film and all, you know what it's like.”

Niall reckons he does, he reckons they were all film stars once. They’ve got tomorrow then, the last of their three days of whatever this has been.

“And then I’ve got that other audition on the 15th.”

Niall blinks. Harry says it so familiarly, like you do off hand, like he’s talking about going to the dentist and not planning his career. “What audition?”

“Ken’s got something going at Donmar Warehouse.” He frowns down at Niall in confusion, but it seems to take a moment to pull himself away from the phone. “I didn’t tell you about it?”

“No,” Niall says shortly. Niall doesn’t know a damn thing. He doesn’t know what the hell Donmar Warehouse is. If Harry thinks his next big project is something to do with manufacturing, he’s in for a pretty rude awakening.

“I guess I forget who I tell things to sometimes.”

“Didn’t know you told people things,” Niall says before he can think better of it and there’s a little too much truth in it to play off.

Harry takes it in stride, his face masked with amusement that could either be genuine or fake. “When the mood strikes me.”

They fall into silence again, letting the intermittent sounds of the bartender clinking as she must be rewashing unused glasses out of boredom because they’re the only ones there. The rain’s doing the heavy lifting.

It’s a cleansing. Niall read a book once, something to do with literary metaphors, last year when he was trying to up his songwriting game. It had said rain was used to cleanse, to wipe clean. Niall figures they could use it. Not to erase anything, because really there’s nothing Niall would do different.

There’s nothing he _could_ do different, and he thinks it’s only fair that if he’d asked to have his heartbreak over Zayn and the way he fucked up his knee and any number of bad things wash away, he’d have to let go of the good things too. And the good things are just too good.

Maybe the rain just needs to remind them that they’re allowed to start again. That what’s happened has happened, and they can go forward and make of it whatever they want to make of it.

Harry smacks his lips obnoxiously with every sip of his mimosa. Niall’s about to tell him to knock it off when he realizes Harry’s doing it on purpose.

“Am I not paying enough attention to you?”

Harry hums. “Not nearly enough.”

“What would you rather I do?” he asks instead of _do you think this rain is meant to wash away of the weight of our past?_

“Show me some of those fancy pro golfer techniques. I’m sure you’ve picked up a thing or two from Justin and Rory.” Their names roll so easily off his tongue though he doesn’t know them, hasn’t met them, has definitely not spent much time talking to Niall about them. But he’s clearly given them some thought.

That’s. Interesting.

He finds himself curled around Harry before long, tweaking the position of his arms and legs, reminding him about things like follow through.

“Here’s where you pivot,” Niall says, his hands bracing Harry’s hips.

“Pivot!” Harry mock shouts, which Niall knows is a _Friends_ joke because Harry gets all excited about it every time someone sets him up to make one.

“Yes, pivot,” Niall says patiently and pivots him. He likes getting his hands on Harry’s hips, likes feeling the movement of them as he runs Harry through the pivot over and over, even though at this point it looks like Harry’s got it.

He startles when his phone starts buzzing in his back pocket.

“Hang on,” he says when he glances at the screen. He steps away from Harry and affects a stupid American accent, says, “Bob’s Pool Hall, 8-Ball speaking.”

"Liam's locked himself in the little gym you've got, since the bloody crack of dawn," Louis answers, which is untrue because Niall was up at the crack of dawn, but he allows the hyperbole. "He's been listening to the song Levels by Nick Jonas for the last two hours. Have you heard this song, Levels by Nick Jonas?"

Niall thinks about it for a moment. "Don't think so."

"I have, Neil. Forty-seven times. I've listened to Nick Jonas high five Jesus forty-seven times."

He peeks back at Harry, who’s going through his swing and has now reached something close to perfection. Niall frowns. "I don't know what that means."

"You're lucky."

"Look, you know he's as stubborn as you, just let him play it. If you try to switch it off, you're only going to exacerbate things."

"Oh, am I?" There's a bit of shuffling on the other end, getting closer to the music, and when Louis speaks again, he's shouting away from the phone. "Liam, Niall says quit exacerbating in his gym."

He can hear Levels by Nick Jonas lower in volume but not pause as Liam shouts back, "What's that mean, exacerbating?"

"It's like wanking while exercising, masturbating, exacerbating," Louis says.

Niall turns, as though his change in position affects Louis in any way over the phone. "It doesn't mean that,” he says firmly. “Don't you let him think it means that. Louis."

"I'm not wanking, why does Niall think I'm wanking?"

"Why else would you listen to Nick Jonas for two bloody hours?" Louis shouts, with what sounds like three pounds on the door timed to _two bloody hours_.

Niall shakes his head in disbelief that he hasn't hung up the phone yet, but he reckons he kind of loves it. This is right, isn’t it? This is the way it’s meant to be.

He feels a poke to his bum, the unforgivingly solid metal of a club getting real familiar in a way Niall’s certain they’re just not ready for. He turns back around and glares at Harry.

Harry raises his eyebrows innocently.

“Lou,” Niall says, interrupting whatever Louis’ going on about -- he stopped listening a while back.  “We’re gonna be home soon, okay, just leave him alone.”

He rings off and Harry’s behind him quickly, his hands on Niall’s hips this time, pivoting him easily because Niall lets him.

“We should probably go, doesn't look like it's going to clear up soon.”

Harry stops, hooks his chin over Niall’s shoulder, and works his face into a frown. “Do we have to?”

He hesitates because maybe they shouldn’t. Maybe they should fuck off all day together. Everyone has to fight for Harry, everyone has to jockey for his time and attention. Niall can keep Harry while he’s his, he can monopolize Harry’s time without having to fight for it. Harry can belong to him.

But that’s not what the weekend is about, it’s about their boys. “Yeah, the lads are waiting for us.”

“Right, of course,” Harry says, detaching himself from Niall’s back and running a hand through his hair like he’s shaking something off.

\--

There’s not a lot to do when you don’t go into the city, but the city is a trap for tourists and journalists and if that picture they took earlier hasn’t hit the internet yet, they’re damn lucky. It’s still pissing rain like the sky is trying to teach them a lesson, and they’re cooped up either napping (Harry) or watching hours of Netflix (Louis) or sitting outside hopefully (Liam) or cleaning up after everyone else (Niall). They’re all doing their own thing, which Niall supposes is just a product of what they’re used to by now, and he can’t think up a good reason to push them all into one room other than he wants to see what’ll happen.

Harry finds his way out of Niall’s room and into the living room eventually, sleepily loping across the floor as he shakes off the remnants of sleep.

Through the opening in the wall between the kitchen and the bar, Niall watches him settle onto the sofa, a respectful distance from Louis, until his head snaps up at the giggle that comes from Louis’ phone. He doesn’t ask, though Niall knows he’s itching to. He’s waiting to be invited -- he’s got to be sought after, he doesn’t do the seeking. Louis knows, maybe better than any of them, jerks his head so Harry knows to slide over closer.

Niall recognizes the sounds of the footage of the little Tommo toddling across a room with varying degrees of success. He’d seen it earlier, half-watching the video, half-watching the proud look on Louis’ face as he watches it again, even though he knows Louis’ got to have seen it some three dozen times.

“He’ll be a proper footballer before long, then?” Harry asks.

“Yeah,” Louis says, pride seeping through the whispery, barely-there voice he uses when he’s being fond. He swallows a few times, his face going wary before it clears. There’s a decision made there, like their stalemate might give way, and it’s Louis, incredibly enough, who’s going to do it.

Niall shifts to hear him a little better.

“You could – y’know, you’re welcome to come by the next time you’re in town, if you wanted to meet him.”

Harry’s face remains frozen as it was, curled up in a soft smile, which is a telltale sign that he’s feeling something big and deep and he doesn’t want anyone to know about it. It looks like it takes a lot out of him to say, “I’d like that. Very much.”

Louis nods and Niall waits and does nothing until it doesn’t feel like a moment anymore because there’re no more dishes to wash, because he doesn’t want to break whatever’s built between them by stomping through the room. He gets by them slowly, moving with a purpose, so neither of them look up from Louis’ phone.

He steps out into the balcony and finds Liam curled up on one of the chairs, what must be a now lukewarm bottle of beer cuddled up to his chest from hours ago. He looks like he’s a thousand miles away, like his eyes can see long past the ocean, further and further across the Atlantic until he hits -- Niall conjures a map of the world in his brain for a second and is fairly certain -- Africa.

“How you doing, Leemo,” Niall says, breaking Liam’s trance.

He doesn’t startle or anything, and when he turns a smile over to Niall, Niall knows he means it because he can’t see Liam’s eyes.

“Just doing a lot of thinking.”

Niall tsks. “I thought we told you to cut that out.”

“Can’t help it,” Liam says like it should be a joke, but it’s not. Liam’s got this way of cutting through the banter to the heart of it. There’s no hesitation with Liam, whose emotions are so close to the surface they can’t help but bubble over, whether they should or not.

“Tell me.”

“You know when, like, you’ve got a day off, so you don’t do anything but sit around in your pants all day, but at the end of it, you feel like you’re more tired after doing nothing than you would be if you’d done something all day?”

“Sure.”

“I feel like that. All the time?” He appears to think about it before he confirms, “Yeah, all the time. It’s like. I dunno what to do, so I do nothing and it’s making me so tired.”

Niall didn’t know that -- he’d figured honestly Liam was too busy, so he’d locked himself away to create and create and create, only to resurface to go to the shops. Liam’s always liked that, the shops, didn’t like to get his groceries delivered like Louis, because going to the shops made him feel normal.

But he genuinely didn’t think the shops was the only thing Liam did all day. Liam, who had the most ambition out of all of them. Who’d nearly killed himself on the X Factor and immediately after making sure they made something of themselves, realizing the weight of what they were doing far before the rest of them did.

“I’ve done like. Nothing.” Liam scrubs at his face. “I mean, you’ve got your golf thing and the writing and all. And what have I got.”

Besides a self-pitying attitude? Niall thinks it before he chides himself -- they’ve all got a bit of the _why me_? now and again when they let the one bad thing overshadow the hundred good ones. It’s easy to fall into that trap when you’re used to having the world at your feet -- not that that makes it right. It just means Niall has to pull him back up.

“You’ve produced stuff, haven’t you?”

Liam does a shrugging nod like he’s sort of reluctant to admit it. “Sure, I thought that would be quite cool, like, doing the making. But then the song’s over and what’s next? I don’t get to do anything with it. It’s out of my hands and it’s just. It’s gone and then I have to do it all over again.”

“That’s not nothing, Liam.”

“I know -- I _know_ , maybe it’s just, like. It doesn’t feel like enough. That’s on me, I know that. It was nice, like, being left alone a bit. Gets frustrating, everybody dumping on you all the time, and you can’t say anything without a thousand people jumping down your throat.”

Niall shrugs. “Comes with the territory.”

Liam looks over to him, his eyes wide and hurt like he’s picturing some of the stuff said to him. He’s probably got some of the worst ones committed to memory, ready to trot out when he needs to punish himself.

“Does it have to?” Liam asks.

It doesn’t, it shouldn’t. The things he’s read, the things he’s seen, and not even about him, to his family members, to his friends, to Zayn -- but it’s not up to him or any of the rest of them. No amount of open pleas for decency is ever going to make a difference.

The real answer is to just not fuck up. It’s a bit harder than it sounds, like, he’s Liam, but more than that, he’s human. There’s not a person in the world who can stop themselves from regularly putting their foot in their mouths.

Except maybe Harry. Harry, who’s put his foot in it so much, he doesn’t move his foot at all. Who can tweet only the word ‘pineapple’ to sixty thousand retweets, and maybe he stirs up a bit of a debate on whether pineapple is better than papaya, or maybe they think he’s secretly working for some sort of pineapple lobby. Either way, none of it means anything.

That’s how you keep them from winning, really, you make sure everything you do doesn’t mean anything. So you don’t feel anything. But Liam’s not like that. Most of them aren’t like that. Liam hears it and gets upset, Louis hears it and gets mad, Niall hears it and pretends he doesn’t, and Harry --

“You didn’t have to do anything,” Niall says just to interrupt his own train of thought. “That was the point of this whole thing.”

“I’ve never known how to just -- not do something.”

“So why didn’t you? You didn’t have to wait for us.”

Liam looks stressed, dropping his eyes to his beer. “Everyone had been waiting for me to pull a Zayn, you know, and I just couldn’t -- I didn’t want to do it on me own, you know? Like. It was something to look over and find someone standing next to you in the weeds, doing the same thing you’re doing, living the same life.”

“Were we?”

Liam blinks. “What?”

“Living the same life.”

“Well, yeah, Niall,” he says, more defensive than he needs to be. “We were doing it together. Maybe it wasn’t like _the same_ , but it was. It was us.”

Niall looks at him. It was them -- it is them.

“And it’s just,” Liam starts, then changes his mind. “I’m not the same person anymore, I dunno. I think I forgot how to be that Liam.”

He already has been a hundred different Liams, maybe he’s realized it, maybe he hasn’t. And, really, it’s not even the band or the success or whatever that’s changed him, it’s just growing up. That’s all they’ve been doing, the past however many years, is just growing up. With millions of people watching and prodding them and educating them and embarrassing them.

You’re not supposed to have it all figured out by age 23.

“Then be another one,” Niall says.

“Which one?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“Can I still be a different Liam in One Direction?”

That’s the second question of the weekend, isn’t it. Not only are they going to get back together, but _can_ they get back together. Do they still fit.

“You said it, mate,” Niall says because that’s what Liam needs to hear now. “One Direction is us. It’s whatever we make it. So yeah.”

Liam makes a face like _fair enough_ , and leaves it at that.

Niall coaxes him back inside, away from the rain that’s starting to make the air so thick with heat it’s intolerable. Liam doesn’t need to be out here on his own. He needs to be in with the rest of them, reminded he’s got a place to belong if ever he needs one.

Louis’ on his phone, Harry’s on his phone, like they’ve had enough for the day, but they haven’t split away from each other yet. Liam falls on the sofa next to Harry, so Niall falls on the couch next to Liam, the four of them squished onto one piece of furniture like they’re used to. Harry wraps an arm around Liam’s shoulders, but just so he can poke his fingers into Niall’s.

It’s an evolution. The rain’s not wiping them clean, it’s not taking away what’s done. They know where they’ve come from and they know where they want to be, and it’s an evolution to find their way there. With or without each other.

They all had their part to play, is the thing. They all had their bits to contribute, Liam’s drive and Harry’s allure and Zayn’s voice and Louis’ protection. It’s part of what made them who they were, and when they lost a bit or when they changed a bit, they had to morph. That’s the secret for something to last forever, to evolve. What’s leftover might not be what you started with, might not even be a shadow of what was, but it’s what is.

\--

Louis’ been banging on about the ghost crabs on the beach since Niall made the mistake of mentioning them yesterday when he warned against digging too deep into the sand. So it’s only a matter of time before Louis announces, “We’re going hunting for crabs,” just when the second episode of MasterChef Junior is about to bleed into the third one.

“Sick,” Liam says immediately. “But we’re not going to, like, actually catch them, right?”

Louis looks dramatically off into the distance. “Only if we’re worthy.”

Liam checks his watch. “You’ve got half an hour, then I’ve got to call the missus.”

Harry looks up from his phone for the first time in hours, over Liam’s head at Niall, and raises his eyebrows in a silent question. Niall nods. There’s no more sitting out. They’re on a time limit now, because as soon as one of them leaves, the rest will surely trickle back to their families.

Niall’s only got one torch, so the rest of them use their phones. They pad barefoot out of the condo, down the two flights of stairs, the pavement, and the dock that leads to the beach. They light their own way, phones whipping about as they race each other to the beach until they all come to a stop, suddenly wary of jumping on any innocent crabs.

They don’t see any as they descend the small dune to get down to the flat part of the beach, and Louis loses faith almost immediately. “I’m starting to think you were lying about the ghost crabs, Niall.”

“Just wait.”

“Oh,” Harry says simply, and that’s how they see their first one. It scurries sideways out of the light from Harry’s phone, going faster than it looks like it should, given its tiny, tiny legs.

“Oh my god, they’re everywhere,” Liam breathes just before he’s pulled away by Louis, following the scatter of crabs further along the beach. And like that, they’re separated again, two and two, and Niall’s not too pleased by that.

Harry steps deliberately, his arm looped around Niall’s in some sort of hesitant promenade. Niall’s more concerned with not stepping on them than he is actually looking at them. He’d seen plenty his first night at the condo, just trying to have a leisurely stroll on the beach, pretty certain the sand’s not meant to move beneath his feet.

“Do you think we’re like mythological to them?”

“The giants that come in the night,” Niall muses.

“Tiny, innocent. Lights blinding them, met with strange creatures they’ve never seen before.” Harry stops and squats, watching a pair of them escape out of their light and back into the shadows. “Look at them, Niall, they’re running for their lives.”

“We won’t hurt them.”

“They don’t know that,” Harry says quietly.

“Oh, fuck,” Liam shouts and his light flashes wildly like he’s jumped away. They’re a bit further down the beach than Niall had noticed.

Louis shrieks. “It’s the King Crab, Liam, don’t let it get away!”

Niall wonders if he’s the one that’s supposed to tell them not to go after the King Crab, as it’s been years and years since the last time Liam’s been reasonable when it comes to Louis. They’ve always needed some sort of wrangler, even as adults. That’s apparently just part of who they are.

“Do you miss this?”

Harry hums. “Yeah, love the beach.”

“No, I mean. This. Do you miss the four of us?”

Harry pulls at his lip. “Sure. It’s nice, getting back together for a bit, it’s been a long time.”

Niall tries not to sigh, frustrated, at whatever kind of canned response that is, good enough for a pap. “We haven’t really seen too much of each other, or connected or anything.”

“I mean, we’re all doing our stuff.”

“Not all of us. Liam’s basically stayed home for a solid year. Did you know that?”

“I didn’t.”

Niall bites down on an argument, on a _you didn’t know, you didn’t care_. Because Niall didn’t know, he didn’t have a clue. And Liam didn’t tell him, probably a bit ashamed by it. It’s not Harry’s style, anyway, to seek that sort of information. As much as he wishes Harry would. Anything to make Harry less of a stranger.

They walk down to greet the tide, far enough that it washes up to their ankles. He likes to stand at the edge and slowly become one with the beach. The water washes up over his feet and he sinks like he’s stood in quicksand. He’s often wondered if he stood there long enough, whether the ocean would gobble him up, claim him for its own.

They’re far enough away from the city that there’s nothing blocking their view of the stars. They stretch on infinitely, shining bright. They’re spinning at a million miles an hour -- or probably closer to about two thousand miles an hour, Niall googled it once -- but Harry and Niall, they’re standing frozen together, unmoving, sinking into the sand.

“Almost doesn’t look real.”

Niall squints over at him in the darkness, but Harry keeps his eyes trained on the sky. “Hmm?” he prompts.

“It’s so clear, it almost looks like you can see them curving up.” He raises a hand to illustrate, but it’s all relative. Niall’s not really seeing the same thing he’s seeing, even though they’re looking at the same thing. “Like a planetarium ceiling and not the actual sky.”

“It’s real. You forget that in the cities and all. But this is the way it’s meant to look.” It’s supposed to look infinite, to make you feel small, to make their existence mean less and last shorter than the blink of an eye.

He wonders if he should start tweeting that at the people who come at them with cruelty, _@arsehole did you know the universe thinks we’re inconsequential ??_ But Niall doesn’t think he’s inconsequential. No one is. In the face of the expanse of the universe, where everything seems like it means nothing, that’s when everything means more than you can possibly imagine.

This is all Niall’s been given, this is his whole universe, not just the three boys on this beach, but thousands of people around the world. He’s got a universe with all of them.

There is a whole universe in Harry, with depths Niall can’t fathom.

“It’s hard to tell sometimes. What’s real or not,” Harry says. “You spend so much of your time living out your wildest dreams, you forget what’s happened and what hasn’t.”

Niall nods, that’s a fair fucking point. It’s part of the reason he’d been so keen to be their stats man. So he’s got a hold on all they’ve done, and what’s left for them to accomplish.

“You need some help?”

Harry rubs at his chin. “We’ve played Madison Square Garden.”

Niall grins. “Real.”

“We’ve been to space.”

“Technically not real, despite video evidence to the contrary.”

Harry turns to him, his face lit by the light of Niall’s torch. There’s a look of intensity in Harry’s eyes, like there’s a fire lit behind them, that Niall recognizes and has never quite understood what it meant.

“I’ve kissed you,” he says. Casual. Like he’s not shattering universes.

Niall’s stomach twists, in a sickening way it shouldn't when someone says they want to kiss you. This shouldn't be the role Harry’s chosen for him. Not again, not this way. This-- this is a step too far.

“Don’t.”

He holds up a hand to stop whatever’s about to come out of Harry’s mouth, can’t help the way his feet twist and nearly knock him over when he pulls them out of their quicksand home. He doesn’t even look for the ghost crabs when he stomps up the beach back toward the pier. He just knows he has to go.

He knows he has to go when he realizes Harry doesn’t think the answer is _real_.

\--

He doesn’t expect Harry to come after him. Harry Styles doesn’t chase, he is chased, but he chases after Niall.

He meant to have something clever to say, was supposed to have thought of it the whole walk up to the condo, something that accurately relays his anger. All he’d been able to think about is how many times he’s excused Harry for doing this sort of shit.

He rounds on Harry when he follows him into the living room and all that comes out of Niall’s mouth is, “What the fuck, Harry?” Which makes Harry look even more pathetic than he had. Niall leaves it at that, though, waits until Harry says something. Otherwise he doesn’t think Harry’d say anything.

It’s several torturous seconds of violence before Harry catches on and says, “That wasn’t -- exactly the reaction I’d planned on.”

Niall bristles. “I’m not sure how you thought I’d handle something like that, came out of nowhere.”

“Did it?” Harry asks.

It didn’t, to tell the truth, it had been building for quite some time, came to a head a couple of years ago, and Niall buried it after then. He’d buried it because it was just another thing Harry did -- he’s handsy and he pays attention when he wants to and he kisses you and then forgets about it.

There are rules, Niall had told himself. There are things you don’t do, and there are lines you don’t cross.

“You know we’ve -- there’s something,” Harry adds when it seems like Niall can’t find anything to say. “There’s always been something.”

He can’t bring himself to deny it because that would be unfair. Because he does look at Harry and feel something, but it’s always _something_. He doesn’t ever name it. “How’s that gonna work on tour?”

Harry doesn’t say anything. Niall can’t really unpack that, nor does he want to, he just says, “How do you imagine this playing out? You’re gonna date me?”

“I could,” Harry says, stronger than Niall expects. “I would, if you wanted me to.”

“Do either of us even know how to date?”

Harry doesn’t look impressed. “We date.”

“Yeah, but there’s a difference between how we date and how normal people date.”

His face grows dark, and Niall knows it’s not over the implication that he’s not normal. Harry’s not normal, never has been. It’s that he has to be compared to it, that normal is even a standard.

“A relationship doesn’t have to be public in order for it to be real. I don’t have to post about you on bloody Instagram before it’s legitimate. It’s nobody’s business.”

“It’s not about publicity, it’s about being all in. I’m there when you need me. For whatever you need me to be. And I piss off when you don’t. I do it, again and again.”

Harry disconnects, hard and fast, and Niall shouldn’t begrudge him, but sometimes he forgets how much it hurts to be on the receiving end of that.

“I’ve always -- ” Harry starts, but he cuts himself off, pulling at his lips with confusion.

“You haven’t thought this through, have you?” Niall asks. “It’s just another thing Harry Styles wants, so he’s going to get it. It doesn’t work like that.”

Harry’s voice goes sharp for the first time. “What the hell does that mean?”

“You don’t get to collect me.”

He’d nearly let Harry do it before. He remembers the ghost of Harry’s lips on his, the way Harry’d laced his fingers through what he could of Niall’s hair. He remembers putting Harry to bed, the sleepy blink of his eyes in the morning when he’d apologized for blacking out the night before.

Harry looks like he’s been slapped and for a moment Niall thinks it’s too much, he wants to apologize when Harry says, “That’s not a very nice thing to say.”

But he doesn’t apologize. Because it’s not enough that it’s not nice -- it doesn’t stop it from being true.

“I haven’t heard from you. We exchange texts on major holidays. I can’t be your… person of the moment just because I’m here. Because I’m standing in front of you and I’m familiar. Not after all this time.”

“You don’t get to decide that I haven’t missed you -- you don’t --” Harry stops, frustrated with himself by the way his face scrunches. “You have no idea how I’ve felt, what I’ve done.”

“I know I don’t. You don’t tell me any of that.”

“You don’t ask!” Harry snaps, then draws back like he’s the one that’s been snapped at. He looks mad, but Niall thinks it’s more at himself for having risen to meet someone who’d provoked him. Harry doesn’t do that, he doesn’t take bait.

“You gotta just give me things, Harry,” Niall says like a plea. “It’s us. I can’t be one of those people chasing after you.”

“You never have been,” Harry says. He holds a hand up to stop Niall’s protest. He’s chewing on something big, looking like he has to psych himself up for it, and Niall understands why once he says it.

“I thought maybe I’d get over it, because surely if you wanted it, you’d have made it happen. You’ve got a plan for everything, Niall. You’d have asked me to love you if you wanted me to. But you didn’t. And here we are, years later, and it’s just the same between us. I mean, you haven’t said you didn’t want this.”

Because Niall does want this. He’s just like everyone else, he’s stupid over Harry, desperate for his attention, his affection. And now that he’s got it, he doesn’t know what to do with it. He doesn’t know how to trust it.

He fists his hands so he doesn’t use them to reach for Harry’s face or to gnaw at his fingernails with anxiety. He hadn’t expected Harry to say this much or mean this much, and he hadn’t expected to be called out for wanting Harry as much as Harry seems to want him. There’s something about that that reads on his face, because Harry’s face goes pinched.

“I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing,” Harry says. “You think it’s so deliberate, you think I know exactly what I’m doing. All part of some, like, grand design to rule the world. But you’re right. I haven’t thought it through. I know I want to kiss you, I want to be around you. I know that much. What comes after, I don’t have a fucking clue. I don’t think that’s a fault.”

Niall’s not often struck dumb -- he knows when to be quiet, when it’s not his place to say anything, or when silence would serve him best. But he’s seen too much and experienced too much to lose the plot, to have the rug pulled out from under him.

Harry shakes his head, ducking his head like he thinks Niall can’t see his eyes are starting to tear up. “You have this way of making me feel like I'm not following along with your script. What else do you want me to say, Niall?”

“Only what you want to say,” Niall manages to say.

“I’ve said it. I’m trying. If it’s not enough, then. Forget I said anything at all.”

The door slams open and shut quickly.

“Nice work bailing on us, lads,” Louis calls as he walks into the living room, stops up when Liam grabs his arm. Louis reads the room as Liam had and snaps his mouth shut.

“M’pretty tired, jet lag’s hitting hard. I’m just gonna.” Harry jerks his thumb toward Niall’s room and then he’s off. Of course Harry’s still planning sleep in his bed.

Liam looks a bit devastated, looking between Niall and his bedroom door. He’s not accustomed to coming between Niall and Harry because they don’t fight. Niall’s not explosive like Louis is and Harry doesn’t let himself get angry. They both simmer, Niall until he can shrug it off, Harry until he forgets about it.

Niall waves a hand, like don’t worry about it. Louis comes to him, throws an arm around Niall’s shoulder and says, “Cheeky cookout, yeah? Fire up the grill.”

“Yeah,” Niall agrees, but his heart isn’t in it.

\--

Liam promises to ring off and join them when the burgers are done, Niall mans the grill, and Louis, typically, sits in the corner, smoking and criticizing Niall’s technique with love. They’re still all off in their own separate corners like they’re allergic to being a foursome. The few hours they’d spent watching Netflix earlier had been an anomaly, but even then, it was spent in silence.

He’s not particularly hungry, not with his stomach twisting tighter every time he sees Harry’s tear-stained face in his mind. It’s probably why he doesn’t drag Harry out of bed and make him sit there with him, make him eat something because they all skipped dinner, make him apologize or maybe listen to Niall apologize.

“I’m sorry for yesterday, like. I didn’t know what to tell you about Freddie,” he tells Louis because that’s the one thing he can do. Because if Harry’s right and Niall’s supposed to have a plan, a script for everything, then Niall failed him.

“You don’t gotta give me answers, Niall. I appreciate the effort, but. I’ll get it sorted eventually.”

Niall glances at him, how he’s still reclined casually in his chair with his feet propped up on the railing. He doesn’t look stressed anymore, so Niall figures it’s another Tommo thing where he blows up about a challenge first before he knows he can overcome it.

Niall’s not sure whether it makes him feel that much better, knowing Louis doesn’t need him like a rock like he used to. “We’re not getting back together, are we.”

“Dunno, lad. Too soon to tell.”

“I’m just waiting for all this to stop feeling temporary. Like we’re on holiday before we get back to school. Back to the grind.”

“Doesn’t feel temporary to me.”

“No?”

“Maybe at the start, like, was just another break. But then the little lad, you know, he just makes everything permanent. This is my life now, sort of thing. So it doesn’t feel temporary, because we can’t really go back to the way we were before.”

“Then we aren’t,” Niall says. The way they were before was a recipe for success, tried and true. But that recipe had lost them a member, had stretched them so thin -- Harry’d said in that meeting, _like butter scraped over too much bread._

“We don’t have to be nonstop,” Louis says like he can read Niall’s mind. “We don’t have to be all or nothing.”

They’ve all got their things, they’re all being pulled in a hundred different directions, and none of them seem to lead back to their music, to each other. They’ve been all or nothing for five full years, they’ve never been casual. They’ve never known how to be.

He doesn’t want to be casual with Harry, he’d want it to be all in. He’d want to go at whatever they had full speed, relentless, until loving Harry was just as critical to him as breathing or singing.

“What worked for us then might not work for us now,” he adds, saying what Niall’s been thinking all weekend.

“It’s an evolution,” Niall suggests. The rain washes clear the shit they’ve been through, but also clears a different path for the future.

Louis hums and nods.

Niall turns back to the grill, flipping the burgers rhythmically, so his mind keeps on the grill and not on everything else. But then it wanders, back to Publix earlier today when he’d gone shopping for supplies with Harry after golfing. Harry making the plea for veggie burgers and failing, Harry  turning a magazine with his face on it around so no one had to look at it, Harry grabbing his hand to run across the car park to avoid the rain.

“There’s always been a path, like, another album, another tour, another interview, it’s just been so clear,” Niall says. “And the last year and a half hasn’t, like, there’s all this new stuff, and I can’t figure out what’s supposed to stick and what isn’t. How I’m supposed to shove you lot back in when I didn’t build this life with you in mind.”

Louis whistles, long and low and pitying. “Thought you were supposed to be the laid back one.”

“Some things are too serious to be laid back about.”

Niall had tried to put his theory of evolution into practice, he’d encouraged Liam to be a new person, he’d tried to understand what Louis was going through and to give him space because of it. But he stopped up with Harry. Harry’d tried to evolve their relationship, take it in what they’d both honestly thought would be the next natural step. And Niall had thrown it back in his face.

“We’re not talking about the band anymore, are we?” Louis guesses.

“No, we’re definitely talking about Harry.”

“What’s he done now?”

“Asked me to kiss him.”

He can tell when Louis goes still because he tries to cover it by leaning forward and flicking his spent cigarette over the balcony. Niall could complain, but he doesn’t keep any ashtrays. Hadn’t really been expecting company.

“Do you want to kiss him?”

“Yeah.” Niall swallows, trying to remember that phrase about the truth and bitter pills. “There’s always been something.”

“Yeah?” Louis encourages gently.

Niall finds himself spilling the whole thing, jumping around in time, desperately grabbing at whatever moments in time he’d felt like he could have loved Harry, that had Niall said anything, they could have done something about it.

Liam arrives halfway through, goes stock still at the door once he catches onto the plot of Niall’s story, and Niall doesn’t pay that any mind. The truth pours out of him like he’s detoxing. He traces all the way up to their fight, Niall’s bluntness, Harry’s vulnerability, and he can’t figure if he comes out on the other side of this story as the villain or if Harry does. He doesn’t want either of them to be.

“That’s a real thing, right?” Niall says to break the monologue. Maybe to get sympathy, maybe just to be told he’s wrong. “Harry’s gotta be sought after, he doesn’t come for you.”

“Well, yeah, but you know him. He doesn’t like to look desperate for attention.”

“But he is desperate for attention.” That’s the thing, is Harry relishes in being chased. He’s heard Harry talk about it with some sort of twisted satisfaction, when he’s confronted with too many mates to choose from.

“So are you,” Louis says and -- he’s not wrong. “So’s anyone who does what we do. It’s just hard to tell who to give your attention to.”

“Who’s not just trying to take advantage of you,” Liam agrees.

“Look,” Louis continues. “Harry’s the most selfish person I know.”

“Tommo,” Liam says, a warning.

Louis holds up a pacifying hand. “But he needs to be. You know? Because he’s the only one who’s going to look out for his own best interests. Took me a while to realize that. And it’s shit that he doesn’t tell people that, but honestly, how do you tell someone that?”

“I look out for his best interests,” Niall insists.

“His best interest crying himself to sleep?” Louis says quietly. Not with too much judgment, because he knows he’s made Harry cry more than his fair share of times.

But the fact that Harry’s cried about it doesn’t excuse Harry’s behavior -- there wasn’t an apology anywhere in his speech, just an _I didn’t mean to_.

“I don’t want to be the one going after him, I don’t want to be the only one trying to make a relationship work. It’s exhausting being the only one who’s doing anything.”

“Sure,” Liam says with an empathetic nod. “But are you doing anything, like, when’s the last time you came to see Harry?”

“When’s the last time Harry came to see me?”

Liam makes a face, like it pains him to argue against Niall. “That’s not fair, mate.”

“Why not?”

Louis cuts in, with a bit of an edge in his voice, “You haven’t come seen any of us either, Nialler.”

Niall’s mouth opens on its own accord, jumping to defend himself, but there’s no argument to be made. He hasn’t seen Liam in ages, he only sees Louis when they happen to be doing the same things or if Louis gives him a text first.

“I’m sure it’s easy for you to pretend you’ve done more than the rest of us, just because you’ve planned this whole thing, but whatever else came before that? Same as the rest of us.”

It’s true, he hasn’t. He’s done the same as Harry, the rest of them. He’s done what he’s pleased, he’s gone home to his family, he’s rebuilt his relationship with the LIC, making new mates. He supposes he’s taken the rest of them for granted.

“And didn’t you say he asked you first?” Liam asks.

“What?”

“He asked you to -- you know, like.” He makes some ridiculous gesticulations, like maybe he’s not brave enough to say it. Maybe it’s sort of unfathomable to the two of them, but it feels so natural to Niall. “Kiss you.”

“Yeah,” Niall admits.

“So maybe he’s not going to make you do all the work,” Louis says. “You’re gonna cut him off before he gets the chance to prove you right.”

“Or prove you wrong,” Liam interjects. “Maybe he’s a different person.”

“Yeah, maybe he’s a replicant,” Louis jokes.

“That’s not what I meant -- Niall and I had talked earlier, so I was talking about that -- ”

“Okay, Payno,” Louis says, somehow managing to sound both condescending and fond at the same time.

The spell feels broken, like whatever had made them talk more honestly and vulnerably than they usually do had released its hold on them. It’s up to banter now. It’s familiar, it’s safe, and Niall clings to it because it’s got nothing to do with Harry.

“When’d you get all reasonable? It’s making my skin crawl,” is Niall’s contribution, directed at Louis.

“Parenthood does things to a person.” When they both laugh at him, Louis insists, “I mean it. They came and brought me into this sterile room, put me in this machine, and injected me with some sort of super serum that gave me the answers to all of life’s greatest questions. First on the list, I guess, is how do I get Harry Styles to shag you, apparently. Knowledge I never really cared to have.”

“Piss off.”

“Look, I’m here for you, Niall,” Louis says, a joke.

“We all are,” Liam confirms, his tone suggesting that it isn’t a joke at all.

\--

He wakes alone, Harry’s side of the bed cool. They hadn't come together in the night, snapping toward each other like magnets like they should. He doesn’t want to roll over to check if Harry’s leather overnight bag is still sitting on the floor because he doesn’t want to confirm what he already suspects. Harry’s gone, slipped out sometime in the night like he’s prone to do, back to LA or London or wherever else he’s needed that’s not here. Probably because after last night’s shit show, he doesn’t think there’s anyone who wants him here.

Niall scrubs his face, pressing his hands over his eyes with self-pity before he rolls himself out of bed.

This room is too bright with the blinds instead of the blackout curtains Niall prefers. Always has him up at the crack of dawn whether he likes it or not, but he reckons that’s for the best. He shouldn’t sleep his day away in his room when he can sleep the day away at the beach.

He pads into the bathroom to brush his teeth. He doesn’t have to apply any aloe to his skin, having nipped a potential sunburn in the bud on Friday. Cheers, Harry. He grabs his guitar from the corner of the room and makes his way out to the balcony where he’d left the grill uncleaned after last night because he was too exhausted to do anything once Louis had decided they were all allowed to go to bed.

Last night was good after a while, once he could fall into the easy rhythm he’s been looking for all weekend. But there was a gaping Harry-shaped hole in the night, as there had been for many other nights, especially towards the end of their tenure together. It should have felt familiar, but all it felt like was wrong.

Niall closes his eyes, letting the sway of the palm trees become his metronome as his fingers gently pluck the guitar. It’s some sort of brief, wandering tune that he’d gotten stuck in his head yesterday, and he plays the same little riff over and over again like maybe he can break through instead of stopping up in the same place every time.

In the end, he didn’t really know what he was supposed to get from this weekend, how they were all going to come out of it. He thinks he’s been waiting for someone to tell him it’s okay to let the three of them go. But he thinks he’s also been waiting for someone to tell him it’s okay to keep them.

They’re different but they still fit. They’re different and they need to stay that way. They’re different and that’s okay. Niall feels more like he needs to make peace with each of them than he needs to secure their future. Louis’ right. It’s too soon to tell.

The door slides open and Harry steps through, dressed in his running outfit, four coffees on a tray in his hand. He looks at Niall and Niall looks back. There might be relief in both of their faces.

Harry settles next to him on the bench, holding the tray out to Niall after he sets his guitar down. The cups aren’t labeled with their names, but they’re all unique. Niall knows which one is his and plucks it off the tray so Harry can set it down on the table in front of them.

Niall pulls the beanie off Harry’s head and runs his fingers through Harry’s hair the way he’s wanted to ever since the first blurry picture of it had hit the internet last year. It feels weird this short, a bit sweaty, but there’s enough to hold onto if Niall wanted to and Harry’s eyes drift close like they always do when he gets his hair played with.

It feels like it could be a truce. Like they’re going to drop it and never pick it back up again, because that’s what the two of them are supposed to do. Niall’s supposed to be too laid back to care and Harry’s supposed to be too disengaged to be held accountable.

So Niall pulls his hands out of Harry’s hair and says, “You did kiss me once. But you don’t remember that, do you?”

Harry’s eyes snap open, his lips parting in surprise before he answers, “No.”

“You were pretty drunk. And scared. You were scared and I’d somehow found a way to calm you down and you’d just done it. You tasted like vodka and snot and I thought like. _This must be what Harry needs. This is what I can do for him._ So I let you do it.”

“When was that?”

Niall shrugs. “Does it matter?”

“Guess not,” Harry answers after a quiet moment, but he doesn’t look like he agrees.

It doesn’t matter to Niall, not if Harry did it because he was too young and scared of what success meant or because he was too old and scared someone else would leave. It all meant the same to him. That their first kiss was spent but not necessarily wasted.

“I’m sorry,” Harry says, his face growing tortured. Niall doesn’t want him to look like that. “That was rude, to have taken advantage of our relationship like that.”

“It’s always like that.”

“What do you mean?”

“Everybody’s always after you, desperate to prove we can give you what you need, just so we could say Harry’s picked us.”

Harry recoils, his face going dark like he’s upset or raging angry or both. “I’m not _collecting people_ like they’re bits of art to look at whenever I feel like, that’s -- that’s cruel to do to a person. It’s not my intention.”

“That’s what it looks like.” Best intention hardly changes what actually happens.

“Sorry, but I don’t give a fuck what it looks like.”

“All I’ve got to go on is what it looks like, because I sure as shit don’t know what’s going on in that head of yours. When you’re standing in front of me and when you’re in LA.”

Niall can tell as soon as he says it that it’s just going to be a repeat of last night. They’ll snap at each other the way they never do until one of them leaves, and the odds against Harry are staggering.

But Harry looks down at his hands and cooler heads prevail and when Harry speaks again, he’s not trying to sound wounded or pathetic. He’s just honest.

“I didn’t want you to tell me you didn’t feel the same way. I was reading the signs and I thought I was right, I was so sure I was right, but. You scare the shit out of me, Niall, and the last thing I’d wanted you to do was lose respect for me.”

Niall pauses. Harry doesn’t give a shit what other people think about him, but he does care what Niall thinks. Every time Niall turns around, he’s finding himself to be one of Harry’s exceptions.

He remembers what the lads had said last night. He’d forgotten it too quickly.

“It’s hard to know who to share things with,” Niall says.

Harry tilts his head like he’s conceding the point. “I’m sorry that made you feel like shit. But. You’ve never asked me to apologize for how other people treat me before.”

Niall startles. He’s right -- it’s not Harry’s fault everyone wants a piece of him, not when he was sixteen and bewildered by it and not when he’s twenty-three and living with it. “I’m not asking you to do that.”

“Also if I’m being a shit, like, tell me off. How else am I going to know how to stop? Otherwise I’ll just keep seeing the world through Harry-tinted glasses. You’re the only one I can trust.”

That hits him hard, both that Harry admits that he trusts him and that Harry doesn’t think he has anyone else to keep him straight. He doesn’t want to think it’s all some sort of _aw shucks, Nialler_ routine, something designed to make Niall feel like the most important person in the world because he’s sitting next to Harry and no one else is. He’s not going to think that.

“Harry-tinted glasses, are you gonna start selling those soon?” he jokes to see the light return to Harry’s eyes and it works.

“Fuck off.” Harry shoves at him and Niall barely moves an inch away with the force of it before Harry’s tugging him back into his side.

Niall grins, something bright that fades into something relaxed. “I should have just said something, instead of holding all this against you, letting it build until I hurt us both.”

Harry hums in a way that sort of sounds like he’s implying, _yes, you should have_. But at least he doesn’t say it. He does say, “I’m sorry it took me this long to figure out that I didn’t want to keep going without you, but. I got there.”

Niall doesn’t think he would have gotten there. He’d have lived without first before ever making a move. But he very much likes the idea that Harry’d taken care of it himself. “Distance makes the heart grow fonder.”

“Distance pulls your head out of your arse, more like,” Harry says, a touch bitter.

Niall closes the distance between the two of them before Harry can think to do it first.

It’s a hesitant press of lips, as innocent as kissing someone’s forehead, and Niall can do that to Harry any old time he likes. He presses into the kiss, he and Harry deepening it at the same time as if they’re on an identical wavelength.

He tastes like coffee and there’s no snot in sight. It tastes like closure when it’s meant to taste like the start of something. So Niall keeps kissing him, gets his hands on him, kisses and kisses until it tastes like a promise.

He gets to have this and no one else does. This is a version of Harry just for Niall.

Harry’s got a smile on his face, something simple and contented, as he looks out over the palm trees. It’ll be a good day for the beach, the sun, the sand, the surf, Niall’s sunglasses. It’ll be a good day to keep Harry with him as long as he can, to get his lads together, to make their last go at it.

Niall plucks his guitar again, feels Harry’s hand slide over his knee and stay there, like he needs a tether, like they need to be bound together or they’ll drift apart.

“I like this tune,” Harry says, his voice lazy like the breeze. “What’s it about?”

Niall hasn’t got any lyrics, but he says, “Rain.”

\----

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you very much for reading! If you need me, I'm [here.](http://wickershire.tumblr.com)
> 
> special thanks to my favorite solo bean for making his entire characterization irrelevant three weeks after i publish this. all the love. (finger guns)


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